Ouargli, or Teggargrent (also ''Twargrit, Təggəngusit''), is a
Zenati Berber language
The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight,, ber, label=Tuareg Tifinagh, ⵜⵎⵣⵗⵜ, ) are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related languages spoken by Berber commun ...
. It is spoken in the oases of
Ouargla
Ouargla (Berber: Wargrən, ar, ورقلة) is the capital city of Ouargla Province in the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria. It has a flourishing petroleum industry and hosts one of Algeria's universities, the University of Ouargla. The commune o ...
(''Wargrən'') and
N'Goussa
N'Goussa ( ar, ﻧﻘﻮﺳﺔ) is a town and commune, coextensive with the district of the same name, in Ouargla Province, Algeria. Some of its inhabitants speak the Ouargli language. As of 2008, the population of the town was 19,039, up from ...
(''Ingusa'') in
Algeria
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.
As of 1987, Ouargli had no more than 10,000 speakers.
Ethnologue estimated only 5,000 speakers as of 1995.
There are some differences between the dialects of Ouargla (''Təggargrənt'') and N'Goussa (''Təggəngusit''), notably in the position of pronominal
clitics; within Ouargla, there are minor differences between the three tribes At-Brahim, At-Sisin and At-Waggin.
Speakers from Ouargla regard the varieties of Ouargla, N'Goussa,
Tugurt/Temacine and
Tumzabt/Mozabite, and possibly other Zenati varieties, as dialects of a single language they call ''Twargrit''. According to Delheure (1987:355), ''at Wargrən fəhhəmən d awəḥdi tawsint'', "the Ouarglis understand Temacine very well."
The principal grammatical study is Biarnay (1908); a less detailed sketch is provided in Basset (1893). Its lexicon is fairly extensively documented in Delheure's (1987) dictionary. The bilingual texts in Biarnay and Basset are more recently supplemented by the texts on daily life in Delheure (1988) and the folk tale collection in Delheure (1989);
[Jean Delheure, 1989, ''Contes et légendes berbères de Ouargla : Tinfusin'', Paris: Boîte à Documents] the latter, unlike other work on Ouargli, includes texts from N'Goussa as well.
References
Bibliography
*
René Basset, ''Étude sur la zénatia du Mzab, de Ouargla et de l'Oued-Rir, Paris, Leroux, 1893
*
Samuel Biarnay, ''Étude sur le dialecte berbère de Ouargla'', Alger, Leroux, 1908
*Jean Delheure, ''Dictionnaire Ouargli-Français (Index Ricapitulatif Français-Ouargli)'', Paris, SELAF, 1987 -
*Jean Delheure, "''Id akkaz ini id ahaji''. Devinettes et énigmes de Ouargla (Sud Algérien)", ''Études et Documents Berbères'' 3 (1987), pp. 76–83 -
*Jean Delheure, ''Vivre et mourir à Ouargla / Tameddurt t-tmettant wargren'', Paris, SELAF, 1988 -
*Jean Delheure, "Baghdidis et l'Ogre. ''Saynète'' dans le parler de Ouargla", ''Études et Documents Berbères'' 4 (1988), pp. 103–115 -
*Jean Delheure, ''Contes et légendes berbères de Ouargla'', Paris, La Boîte à Documents, 1989 -
*Jean Delheure, "''Izlan d id aghanni''. Poésie et chants de Ouargla", ''Études et Documents Berbères'' 5 (1989), pp. 85–104 -
*Alain Romey, ''histoire, mémoire et sociétés, L'exemple de N'goussa: oasis berbérophone du Sahara (Ouargla)'', Paris-Alger, L'Harmattan-Awal, 1992
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Berber languages
Languages of Algeria